GIL Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R riders Katsuaki Fujiwara and Chris Martin made their first dry laps of the weekend today and ended up qualifying on the fifth and seventh rows of the grid respectively.
Fujiwara used his available dry time to make good improvements in his machine’s set-up, and despite setting 17th fastest time, he knows more can be forthcoming on raceday.
Martin found the ten years or so it has been since he last raced at Vallelunga in the dry, on a circuit that also has a different track layout in places now, a long bridge to cross in dry conditions. He was 25th in the rankings today, despite being fifth in yesterday’s wet session.
The 22-lap World Supersport race is expected to be run in dry conditions on Sunday, and the team still has a 20-minute warm-up session tomorrow morning to make final changes and preparations.
Katsuaki Fujiwara: “Things were OK today because even if we only qualified 17th we made improvements in our dry weather settings all the way through the sessions. We have a little chatter from the machine but not so much. Tomorrow will be even better than today and I think that we can do better than a top ten performance if it all goes well. There are places to pass here.”
Chris Martin: “We didn’t get the same kind of result in the dry as we did in the wet yesterday but we improved things a bit at a time, and I was having to learn the track again as well. It feels very different in the dry. We found it hard to get the best set-up with only one day of dry practice, especially after having so little normal practice time at Donington last time out as well.”
